Soon we will leave for our 3 week vacation. We have some pepper plants and tomato plants inside, plus some grape twigs that are finally developing roots. They will have to be able to survive those three weeks without getting water. We plan to set them out in the garden, like we did last year with the plants. But than we didn't have tomatoes and peppers, just normalt living room plants.We put the plants outside today to get used to that, just not where the rain could fall and also on the east side of the house (only morning sun). My avocado plant was getting a hard time in the hard wind with it's big leaves. So I put in in a more wind shielded area.When we go on vacation we will put them in the open where they can catch rain.

Came back from a ~5 day vacation and got the first major harvest of the year. We're going to get a kitchen scale and try to keep track of how much we get for reference point since it's our first year gardening.

My wife guesstimates she only picked about 1/2 of the beans compared to the remaining ones and flowers. Think that'll be enough for the next year...

We're going to have an insane crop of tomatoes which is great and the point (want to freeze enough for a year) and zucchini is doing its thing already (well you always get a ton from a single zucchini plant). Our cantaloupe plant that has looked anemic all year is looking better and better now and has about a dozen flowers. So we'll see. Tomatoes on the left are early girl, the right are defiants. All those plants started pretty big compared to the others.

Pruned a TON off our tomato plants. I probably pruned 50 branches off of one plant which was insanely bushy. Hopefully that helps. Most of the dozen tomato plants we have now have about a dozen flower clusters on them... so that's great :D

Our peas are getting hit with powdery mildew. Though at this point.. even if they all die I guess we got plenty of peas haha. Just will have to watch that spreading to the other plants. Luckily the beans are a buffer and those are going to all come out in a few weeks or so as they are in their peak harvest now.

About half our peppers have peppers on them now. Have 3 giant flavorburst ones going right now which are turning already colors. Next year I think we'll start peppers (bought them all this year) and start them to be ready to go much earlier than we did this year.

The spontaneous "oops forgot to eat them" potatoes we planted in a spot that gets poor sun are all flowering, soooo... might actually get some of them too?

This week the last of the raspberries got picked just as the first of the blackberries were ready! We have a lot of blackberry vines so should be set for them for at least four weeks. The blue berries should be ready about the time the blackberries quit but the birds seem to really be liking our limited blue berry bushes this year, so they may not yield much (we have one early variety bush and it was picked clean).

rabbits ate our green beans - we got one meal out of them. the plants were too big, so they ate all the leaves, and any beans, but not to the ground The beans are trying to flower again so I'm just leaving them as a rabbit buffet.

The rabbits also have grazed on the kohlrabi, and beets. Nervy buggers.

Got a good-sized handful off of my second-year blueberry bush today too, with more to come.

Unfortunately, it looks like my peas are once again a FAIL. Maybe it got too hot? Other beds in my community garden have peas that are still going strong, though. Mine have mostly dried up despite diligent watering, and have produced exactly one pea pod. The same thing happened last year.

I can't figure out whether the tomatoes in the community bed are a bit stunted this year, or whether it's just that the ones in my back yard are SO full and bushy and healthy, that they just look a little spindly by comparison. I've also been diligently pruning them and shoving them back into their cages when they threaten to sneak out of them, so perhaps they are just more contained. I should go look at last year's garden pix and see where they are compared to last year at this time. All but 3 plants are currently making tomatoes. The other 3 have flowers on them, but don't seem to be fruiting. They are all heirloom varieties which I know can sometimes be tricky, and low bearers. (White Beauty, Brandywine, and Gold Medal, if anyone's interested. I was especially interested in White Beauty but so far it's just making flowers that shrivel up. Oh well. Started from free seeds, so I'm only out my time and effort.)

Got a good-sized handful off of my second-year blueberry bush today too, with more to come.

Unfortunately, it looks like my peas are once again a FAIL. Maybe it got too hot? Other beds in my community garden have peas that are still going strong, though. Mine have mostly dried up despite diligent watering, and have produced exactly one pea pod. The same thing happened last year.

I can't figure out whether the tomatoes in the community bed are a bit stunted this year, or whether it's just that the ones in my back yard are SO full and bushy and healthy, that they just look a little spindly by comparison. I've also been diligently pruning them and shoving them back into their cages when they threaten to sneak out of them, so perhaps they are just more contained. I should go look at last year's garden pix and see where they are compared to last year at this time. All but 3 plants are currently making tomatoes. The other 3 have flowers on them, but don't seem to be fruiting. They are all heirloom varieties which I know can sometimes be tricky, and low bearers. (White Beauty, Brandywine, and Gold Medal, if anyone's interested. I was especially interested in White Beauty but so far it's just making flowers that shrivel up. Oh well. Started from free seeds, so I'm only out my time and effort.)

I've grown heirloom Gold Medal and Brandywine and they did OK me. Brandywine produced better, Gold Medal makes BIG tomatoes, and seems to be a bit slow about it. Brandywine are nice big (not huge) tomatoes. I didn't track weight of fruit from each plant, but have an idea of how many tomatoes/plant. By weight there would be less difference in yield, but I think a Brandywine would still be higher than Gold Medal.

I don't think peas got too hot, ours get full sun all day and are probably 6 feet tall right now (they only have about a 4 foot fence to grow up, too, kind of ridiculous how straight they still grew after taht).

When did you plant them? Did you weed them fairly regularly? We picked about 4 pounds of peas today from maybe 35 feet worth of pea plants...

rabbits ate our green beans - we got one meal out of them. the plants were too big, so they ate all the leaves, and any beans, but not to the ground The beans are trying to flower again so I'm just leaving them as a rabbit buffet.

The rabbits also have grazed on the kohlrabi, and beets. Nervy buggers.

I don't think peas got too hot, ours get full sun all day and are probably 6 feet tall right now (they only have about a 4 foot fence to grow up, too, kind of ridiculous how straight they still grew after taht).

When did you plant them? Did you weed them fairly regularly? We picked about 4 pounds of peas today from maybe 35 feet worth of pea plants...

rabbits ate our green beans - we got one meal out of them. the plants were too big, so they ate all the leaves, and any beans, but not to the ground The beans are trying to flower again so I'm just leaving them as a rabbit buffet.

The rabbits also have grazed on the kohlrabi, and beets. Nervy buggers.

I don't think peas got too hot, ours get full sun all day and are probably 6 feet tall right now (they only have about a 4 foot fence to grow up, too, kind of ridiculous how straight they still grew after taht).

When did you plant them? Did you weed them fairly regularly? We picked about 4 pounds of peas today from maybe 35 feet worth of pea plants...

I know I planted them late, but it is what it is, because we weren't allowed into our community garden plots until April 22. I planted them (from seed) that day. I did weed; that part of the bed didn't really seem to get very many weeds but I did pull what came up. I watered them regularly. Nevertheless, one by one they became dry and crispy overnight and then keeled over. (like, one day they were fine and the next, nearly dead.) Maybe all that water I gave them still was not enough? Do peas get diseases? Because their rapid death makes me think disease or parasite, but I didn't see anything like that on them.

G-dog, good to know about the Gold Medals, that they are later bearers. It is still fairly early in tomato season here in Chicago; I just now am getting a couple of ripening sungolds. The Gold Medal does have flowers on it, as does the Brandywine. Just no hint of fruiting yet. The plants look pretty healthy though so I'm just going to let them do their thing.

It is HOT here in Boise, and the squash bugs are out in force. I will probably harvest all the garlic on Tuesday when it's going to be a blessed 90 degrees instead of 100.I need to get some seedlings started for fall crops this week.

I will not plant these purple carrots again. Most of them bolted instead of forming roots, and the ones that did aren't that great. There were some nice Nantes carrots in the mix though. Here is today's haul:

We got quite a few strawberries at the beginning of June - a few quarts worth anyway, which is better than usual. I planted these strawberries 20 years ago, and they've sort of wandered around the yard over the years.

The first rush of raspberries is about done. I've picked a cup or two every day for the last several weeks. The next round of flowers is starting. We did have a week of very hot weather that seemed to damage some of the plants this year (we were out of town, so I'm unsure if that's exactly when it happened.)

Dh built a new bed in the front, and the first round of tomato plants were devoured by bunnies so I had to replant them. You can tell it's a first year bed because those plants are okay, but not wonderful. The other bed of tomatoes plants is quite exuberant this year!

Kale is good. Broccoli is good. Squash is good. I expect to start harvesting basil next week.

I had peas planted in tubs, and we actually got quite a few! I pulled them out last week and replanted with some green beans.

We have been able to eat 6 of our strawberries per day.The tomatoe plants have been collapsing, so we have tied them around a stick. The peppers plants are still tiny.My avocado plants is growing well, getting many big leaves. I just put it in a bigger pot. Unfortunate that it will take about 7 years before it will grow avocadoes, if it does at all.

Is it a Haas avocado tree? If it is, I think it is a hybrid and it has been propogated from a single tree back in the 1920's. You my not get any avocados. It has been propagated by trimmings spliced with tree trunks from other trees. I might be wrong, but I remember reading about it.

I'm trying to decide the same thing, now that stuff is dying off in the community raised bed. The peas are FAIL, so they're gonna go. Lettuce is almost done. The garlic greens have all shriveled up - I pulled one to see if it had done anything and got a very small garlic bulb. In general the garlic did really poorly this year; I'm going to blame it on not having had a proper winter with much snow at all. So I'm probably going to pull the rest of that.

I have some chard in a pot at home that is doing OK but it does much better in the ground for me, so that'll take up one square-foot of the bed. Also a dill that's finally starting to grow after being quite stunted for a few months - that can go in the bed too. I have a bunch of basil in pots, but I've also got some in the home raised bed and it's convenient to have it all in one place, given the quantities of pesto that I plan on making with it. So I think I'm going to leave that as is.

Can you easily freeze pesto? I wonder if I should plant a bunch of basil. Though my wife dislikes pesto immensely I really like it..

Basil turns black in the freezer - so make sure there is enough oil to cover any pesto and I think it is fine.

Maybe I will do that then. I kind of want to play with starting plants inside anyways and it'd be nice to try on a "throwaway" setup I don't care about since next year I'll be a bit sad if our started plants fail.

Here's the pile of pea plants that gave us about 7.5 pounds of peas (in about 29 feet of plants):

They might have kept going but the powdery mildew was really getting bad on them. Unfortunately I showered all the beans with it when pulling them out... :\ at least they are nearly done too and no where near as susceptible as the peas are (in theory, at least).

Again pruned tomatoes and this time pruned all of them. Anecdotally it seems this is having a huge impact, as the plants I had pruned within the past week now all have well over a dozen flower clusters and most of which are new. Hard to tell whether that's causation or correlation, but either way the large number of branches I pruned weren't doing much. I think next year I'm going to try to get ALL very tall tomato cages as many of the tomatoes are already above the top of their cages and it's still early July! I might have to stake/tie them at this rate.

Gosh I forget how good Sungolds are. Next year we might just plant them for cherry tomatoes. We have a few cherry varieties but again Sungold is by far my favorite.

Many of our purchased/transplanted peppers are anemic. The only ones which are really doing well are ones we transplanted first and which were large when we did that - next year I'm going to aim to have all the pepper transplants like 8" or taller when we plant them in late May.

Pulled out more beans tonight too. Up to about 6.5 pounds (from ~24 linear feet worth, 3 rows of about 8 feet long and about a foot row spacing). Going to be a good amount as we'll get more from them too. Then a good sized area will free up between peas/beans (probably a 10x15 area?) and I have to figure that out. I guess that could be a lot of basil ;)

Got a good-sized handful off of my second-year blueberry bush today too, with more to come.

Unfortunately, it looks like my peas are once again a FAIL. Maybe it got too hot? Other beds in my community garden have peas that are still going strong, though. Mine have mostly dried up despite diligent watering, and have produced exactly one pea pod. The same thing happened last year.

I can't figure out whether the tomatoes in the community bed are a bit stunted this year, or whether it's just that the ones in my back yard are SO full and bushy and healthy, that they just look a little spindly by comparison. I've also been diligently pruning them and shoving them back into their cages when they threaten to sneak out of them, so perhaps they are just more contained. I should go look at last year's garden pix and see where they are compared to last year at this time. All but 3 plants are currently making tomatoes. The other 3 have flowers on them, but don't seem to be fruiting. They are all heirloom varieties which I know can sometimes be tricky, and low bearers. (White Beauty, Brandywine, and Gold Medal, if anyone's interested. I was especially interested in White Beauty but so far it's just making flowers that shrivel up. Oh well. Started from free seeds, so I'm only out my time and effort.)

Since we are almost in the same city, I'll chime in on that. My peas were an absolute failure 2 years in a row. next year I'm not going to even try. It's either weather (this year) or rabbits (last year). I have picked only 2 blueberries from a 3-4 year old bush. Others are still ripening - I covered them with cottage cheese cloth (birds), may be that's the reason?Tomatoes: HUUUUUGE ! Switched to Early Girl (YESSS!!! Wonderful! big fruits, already turning yellow. Big vines, lots and lots of fruits. Indeterminate, meaning I will have them produce until October if I keep pruning them right), Monster (big big fruits, later in season than girl tho, which is good), same cherry (nice and better than last year).Cucumbers: crying here. Not good at all this year. No bees, no rain (lately), no nothing. Bunnies ate 4 bushes to the roots. The ones that are still there produce nothing, even with hand pollinationPeppers: topped them at 3 leaves. So they are going to produce fruits (or how do you call it?) later than non-topped ones, but the crop will be better by a huge margin. Already seeing little guys there.Cilantro: meh, I'd call it fail. Not goodParsley: meh, better than cilantro but still. Don't know WTF.Dill: goodBasil: OK to goodPumpkin: no idea, there's a monster bush 4x4 ft in the garden :) bloomed today. Gonna take over the gardenExperimental potatoes (just to show my family how potatoes grow) not very good, probably because of pumpkin shade (potatoes need sun)Blackberries: joke. No idea WTF is going on, bloomed a lot, but then NO berries.

I've never had luck with cukes. Or Early Girl. Whenever I've grown Early Girl, the yield was just OK and the plant invariably looked like shit. Seriously, one year it was a brown stick with a few leaves on it - but still making tomatoes, however feebly, so I just let it do its thing until they ripened and the whole thing keeled over. Fourth of July is my new favorite early variety, though the name is false, I never actually get ripe tomatoes by the 4th. I think last year it was the 18th. This year there are bunches of tomatoes on it but all still very green.

Now that I have yard space I might try starting peas really early like you're supposed to. I feel like not being able to direct sow until late April, as that's when the community bed opens, impedes things. But that means I need a bunny fence at home. Ugh.

My cilantro did very well, then suddenly got bitter - but hadn't actually bolted. For me, cilantro doesn't last that long - maybe a few weeks. I've read that you should continue sowing seeds all season so that when one plant's dying, another is getting ready. Meh. I don't eat that much cilantro so that doesn't seem worth it. Though I do have more seed, and some spaces opening in the community bed as stuff dies off in the heat.

Not to make you feel bad, but I have TONS of bumblebees in my backyard. One day I counted at least 12, happily pollinating the flowers that my landlord put in. I asked him what they were and he said hydrangea - they don't look like hydrangea to me, though, they're less poofy. Maybe a different variety? Anyway, maybe plant some pollinator plants near your veg garden if you have the space? They seem to be making the bees very happy.

Or Early Girl. Whenever I've grown Early Girl, the yield was just OK and the plant invariably looked like shit. Seriously, one year it was a brown stick with a few leaves on it - but still making tomatoes, however feebly, so I just let it do its thing until they ripened and the whole thing keeled over.

Huh. Our early girls are on pace for an astronomical crop right now - each of them has already produced a half dozen tomatoes and each have probably 5 clusters growing now with another dozen recent flower clusters.

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Not to make you feel bad, but I have TONS of bumblebees in my backyard. One day I counted at least 12, happily pollinating the flowers that my landlord put in. I asked him what they were and he said hydrangea - they don't look like hydrangea to me, though, they're less poofy. Maybe a different variety? Anyway, maybe plant some pollinator plants near your veg garden if you have the space? They seem to be making the bees very happy.

I've wondered about whether peas/beans help with this. The peas flowered first, then the beans, with tons of flowers - so our garden is full of bees too, in fact I was annoyed the other day that there were so many bees in the bean plants that I didn't want to pick them!

We also got burrowing honeybees on the perimeter of our patio. And I'm sick of shooting down paper wasp nests.. I wonder if there's something I can spray to get rid of them or stop them from rebuilding nests in our overhangs.

Oh my...I missed this thread (probably because I've been out in the garden so much lately). I only have a tiny plot in a community garden but I've been harvesting lettuce, beet greens and a tiny bit of spinach regularly for a few weeks now. My tomatoes are starting to fruit but they look like they'll need a bit of time before anything's ready to be picked. I've been thinning my carrots and beets and they're starting to look pretty much full size (carrots probably need another week or so). I had a huge radish crop which was funny, because I originally planted them simply because they are a quick crop but now I really like radishes and am impatiently waiting for the next wave to start growing.

Beans are growing but no actual beans have been sighted yet.

Strawberries...between the birds and squirrels, I haven't had a chance to have a single one but I'm trying to not buy more garden stuff at this point. I'll dig out some row cover and see if I can rig something up at that end of my plot.

My bell peppers aren't doing much (I didn't know I had to top them!) and were hit pretty hard by a recent hail storm so I might just give up on them.

I also have a bush squash plant but this is my first real garden so I very naively squished a lot into my plot. The squash is not getting a lot of sun due to other plants so I'm not expecting much there.

I thought I'd try gardening to see what it was like to grow some of my own food...I had no idea it would become so addictive!!! I'm already trying to plan for next year. :D

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I'm late to the game but I'm trying to be quick to pick up how to play!!

I'm not sure how the Iowa growing season is, but here I just dug up some early potatoes and planted parsnips, beets and carrots in their place.

This weekend I'm starting cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower inside and will plant them out under shade cloth in mid-August. That worked last year to give them enough time to grow before the weather cooled, but not so much that they bolted. The shade cloth will come off in September. I'll also try for a fall lettuce crop planted around Sept. 1, and a few radishes.

All of the tomatoes in my community garden appear to have gotten hit with early blight and just were not looking as vigorous as they had in past years (or as vigorous as the ones in my backyard). I did some research and talked to folks at the garden center, and came home with a bottle of organic fungicide (we are only permitted to use organic products in the community garden). $9.99. Also got some tomato-specific soil amendment that I've used in past years with great success, because the garden folks pointed out - and I knew this but don't have much choice other than to not grow tomatoes for a year or two - that if you keep growing the same plant in the same spot the soil's nutrients get depleted. $12.99.

After a few days of applying both, the tomatoes are looking happier and less diseased! But, I think about how many 59-cent cans of tomatoes I could've bought at Aldi instead and started feeling kind of disgusted with myself.

I don't just grow my own to save money, though. I do it because I enjoy it, because homegrown tomatoes taste better, because I get to try new and different varieties, because it's important to me to be in control of my food supply to the extent possible as a city dweller with very little access to land.

I still feel kind of angry with myself for spending $25 and change after tax, when I know I won't get $25 worth of tomatoes back out of it. Does anyone else ever feel this way?

I still feel kind of angry with myself for spending $25 and change after tax, when I know I won't get $25 worth of tomatoes back out of it. Does anyone else ever feel this way?

I do feel that way until I eat my first couple of tomatoes. The first slice of Cherokee Purple on my BLT or with mozzarella and basil and I'm always thankful I plant them.

On a tomato note - we got some free Brad's Atomic Grape starters from our head community gardener this year and I'm not sure when they ripen! They are huge for "grape" tomatoes and they've been green and purple for weeks. It is driving me crazy.

I was also a dummy and planted two indeterminates too close to each other and now I have a six foot jungle of tomatoes in one of my 4x4 plots).

I sometimes have that feeling of why bother too - and then I get a fantastic pick of something - and bam - feeling is gone.

Today I harvest all the garlic and onions. The odd garlic was going mushy. I think that the super wet weather is not good. I got a decent harvest. They were drying on a cardboard box in the garden until it started to rain . Now they are on the garage floor.I was also able to pick a quart of yellow bush beans and one - but a good size - golden beet. Last week I picked two rodinia beets. All three are simmering away.Tomatoes are coming along....any day now.

Lousy year for tomatoes here- early blight was bad, weather was bad- but hoping some late volunteers will save the season. Garlic heads on the small side, shallots ok, carrots happy. Beans mixed, cakes happier than I've seen them, peppers just kicking into gear after a rough start.

It's not economic but it's tasty, pushes me to eat more veg, and I think of it as therapy and community building- do a lot of passing things over the fence with neighbors.

I do feel that way until I eat my first couple of tomatoes. The first slice of Cherokee Purple on my BLT or with mozzarella and basil and I'm always thankful I plant them.

Ooooooo, thank you for that reminder. Last year I grew Cherokee Purple and it made exactly one huge tomato. It was glorious. This year I've got probably 8 tomatoes on that plant, with more coming. Not ripe yet, but I cannot wait! I'm so happy I planted that one again this year; almost didn't because of last year's poor yield.

OH yes! On a pure cost basis (seeds, plants, amendments, watering...) I think there is a poor ROI on lots of garden stuff. But it's not just cost, is it.

No. It's not. It's a hard thing to explain to someone who doesn't also garden. I often get "but.... you can just buy that stuff at the grocery store, can't you? Why put in all that work?" I don't bother explaining it any more.

And this is the third year of purely volunteer regrowth tomatoes (Black Cherry heirlooms). Aside from the cost of watering every few days, I haven't bought anything associated with tomatoes since 2014, but I still haven't finished all of last year's harvest. The key seems to be to plant the tomatoes right next to the compost heap.

I wish, though, that I'd bought some Cherokee Purple seeds. The last time I grew them, which happened to be 2014, I also got exactly one glorious tomato. It was worth the cost and the summer of trouble, even now that it's a three-year-old memory. It made me remember what summer is supposed to be like, and for a few minutes I was young again and the US was celebrating its bicentennial. Hmm. Next summer I plant Cherokee Purple on the other side of the compost heap.

Almost all my tomatoes in the raised bed are loosing leaves (turning brown and fall off). What is it? Dots appear and then all dry. Fruits are OK, but I worry that with less foliage the plants will produce less. They looked sooooo healthy 3 weeks ago

Almost all my tomatoes in the raised bed are loosing leaves (turning brown and fall off). What is it? Dots appear and then all dry. Fruits are OK, but I worry that with less foliage the plants will produce less. They looked sooooo healthy 3 weeks ago

Likely Septoria Leaf Spot or blight. For either, the "treatment" is pretty much the same. Cut off infected leaves (most places say to, some say it doesn't matter though for septoria) and use fungicide to help minimize the spread (a copper fungicide is what I use). The fungicide won't "stop" or kill off the infection, but can help protect non-infected plants/leaves. I've lost ~1/2 of my plants both the last two years to such things though, so I may not be the best person to consult..

It's storming out today, so time for some inside activities instead of gardening. We've been eating bush beans, zucchini, carrots, and some early potatoes, as well as all of the greens, of course. I've been running a mini weekly CSA with friends where they pay me what they can/like for produce and it's been pretty fun. Not really making much money, but at least the food isn't going to waste. I've also donated a lot of greens to the local youth shelter :)

Here's a picture of yesterday's harvest. Round and long zucchini, carrots, and golden beets.

I have herbs (basil, cilantro, dill, parsley) in the same bed under the tomatoes. Will it hurt them and ME? :)

I've sprayed it on all my plants (including herbs) without any damage. I'd recommend not spraying them the day you plan to harvest from them, but it shouldn't be a problem.

Trees/bushes, on the other hand, should be avoided. Copper fungicide should only be applied to peach trees (for instance) when dormant or it will damage the tree (temporarily). I learned that one the hard way :(